Students will learn about Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps and the differences between the two services.

Obtain prescriptive guidance on scenarios where one technology is a better fit over another

Understand the different security and governance capabilities in each technology

Use this content to make informed decisions on which tool you should use

Requirements

No prior development in Microsoft Flow or Azure Logic Apps is required, but prior exposure to one of these technologies is suggested.

To follow along in the Microsoft Flow demos, students will require access to a Microsoft Flow through an Office 365 or Dynamics 365 plan. Alternatively, a free trial can be used.

To follow along in the Azure Logic Apps demos, students will require access to Azure Logic Apps through a Microsoft Azure subscription. Alternatively a free trial can be used.

Previous experience with Office 365 or Microsoft Azure is encouraged but not required.

Description

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to choosing to use Power Automate (Microsoft Flow) or Azure Logic Apps. As a result, there are a lot of opinions out there, but not many of them are objective. In this course we will deep dive on the feature sets of both technologies and then provide prescriptive guidance through real-world examples.

Update - August 14th, 2019

I have added 2 additional lectures that can be found in the New Content - Added after the original publishing of the course section. The 2 lectures include content about 2 new features found in Microsoft Flow (Copy to my clipboard) and Azure Logic Apps (Secure Inputs/Secure Outputs). You will find this section towards the end of the course. Enjoy!

In this lecture, Kent will walk through the pre-requisites to take this course. Ultimately, prior hands-on experience with Microsoft Flow or Azure Logic Apps is not required, but some exposure to these technologies is recommended.

Course Pre-requisites

00:51

Kent provides some background information about his work history which makes him a good candidate to deliver this course. This information includes his role as Principal Program Manager on the Microsoft Flow Product group, his active and prior involvement in the Microsoft MVP program as a Microsoft Flow MVP (current) and Azure Integration MVP (previous). In addition, Kent is a published author, co-writing 3 books on BizTalk Server and is an Emerging Technology and Cloud Editor at InfoQ.com

Lecture 12 includes information about Approvals including how they are used, where the data is stored, custom options and where they can be responded from.

Microsoft Flow Approvals

05:12

This lecture contains information about Maker Analytics including the license required, how long data is stored for and the type of information that you can analyze.

Microsoft Flow Maker Analytics

02:22

In this lecture, Kent will discuss physical and virtual buttons, including some of the first and third party integrations that exist for these buttons.

Microsoft Flow Buttons

05:53

In this demo we are going to see some of the recent topics in action! This includes the Flow Mobile app, Approvals, notifications and Maker Analytics. All illustrated in the context of a Mobile Expense solution using Microsoft Flow and SharePoint Online.

In this lecture we are going to discuss the two sharing models available in Microsoft Flow: Co-Ownership and and Run-As permissions. Kent will outline some of the trade-offs that exists with each approach.

Microsoft Flow Sharing

05:28

In this demo, Kent will take the learnings from Lecture 16 and put them into action by demoing the two sharing models available in Microsoft Flow: Co-Ownership and Run-As.

Demo: Microsoft Flow Sharing

03:42

Lecture 18 contains information about Microsoft Flow's Application Lifecycle Management including the ability to package up multiple flows into a single deployable unit that allows you to promote flows from a Test environment to a Production environment.

Microsoft Flow Application Lifecycle Management

03:53

In this lecture, we are going to discuss the Governance features available in Microsoft Flow including Management Connectors, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies, Environments, Admin Analytics PowerShell, O365 Security & Compliance and flow run/run history durations.

Microsoft Flow Governance

07:42

In Lecture 20 we are going to talk about how to graduate a flow to a logic app by using the export and import features that are available in Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps.

Graduate Microsoft Flow to Azure Logic Apps

03:25

In this lecture, we are going to see a demo of some of the recent topics that we just covered including Solutions, Environments, Admin Analytics and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies.

In this lecture, Kent will introduce Logic Apps and summarize its position as an Integration Platform as a Service offering that requires an Azure subscription. He will also touch on the billing models and where Logic Apps sits within the broader Microsoft organization.

In Lecture 26, we discuss the different tools where we can create and edit logic apps including a web browser, Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

Azure Logic Apps Editing Experiences

02:59

In this lecture we are going to review the Enterprise Integration Pack and the benefits it provides including Typed Schemas, Flat files, XML and JSON transformations and Trading Partner Management.

Azure Logic Apps Enterprise Integration Pack

04:48

Inline Code is a relatively new feature that allows developers to write short-lived Javascript code that can be executed within a logic app without requiring a separate host. In this lecture we will discuss how to implement this feature.

Azure Logic Apps Inline Code

02:38

In this lecture we are going to demo some of the recent topics including the Enterprise Integration Pack/Integration Account, Visual Studio editing experiences and Inline Code.

Azure Logic Apps ISE is a dedicated, capacity-based model that includes increased thresholds and limits for logic app workflows. It also includes fixed billing and VNet support. In this lecture, Kent will provide a deep dive on the capabilities found in ISE.

Azure Logic Apps Integration Service Environment

07:10

In this lecture we are going to discuss the 'better together' scenarios that exist with Azure Logic Apps and other Azure services like Service Bus, Azure Functions, API Management and Event Grid.

Azure Integration Services

03:42

In Lecture 32 we will walk through configuring APIM to protect a logic app and prevent unauthorized access by restricting who can call our logic app http endpoint.

Demo: Azure Logic Apps / Azure API Management

13:11

In Lecture 33, we are going to talk about monitoring Azure Logic Apps and the unique capabilities that Azure provides for Logic Apps. We will also briefly talk about a 3rd party tool, Serverless360 which can also be used for monitoring purposes.

Azure Logic Apps Monitoring

04:10

Azure Monitoring is a service that organizations can use to monitor Azure resources, including Azure Logic Apps. In this lecture we will see a demo that includes configuring Azure Monitor to subscribe to logic app alerts and then log an incident into ServiceNow, an IT Service Management tool.

Demo: Azure Logic Apps Monitoring

15:03

Lecture 35 compares and contrasts the Azure Logic Apps Governance story against the one the exists with Microsoft Flow and includes concepts such as Identity & Access Management roles, Resource Groups and logging.

Azure Logic Apps Governance

06:31

In this lecture, we will see some demos regarding Azure Logic Apps governance including Resource Groups, Identity and Access Management (IAM), data retention and publishing telemetry to Azure Log Analytics.

In this lecture we are going to talk about some of the influences that can determine which tool should be used when making a decision between Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps.

The Battle

06:54

Lecture 38 introduces the concept of making our decision based upon business needs and focusing on using the right tool for the job.

Focusing on the Business

01:32

In this lecture we are going to talk about a couple myths that are often perceived when trying to identify the correct tool for the job.

Myths

04:09

Organization design is often overlooked when determined how to use these tools. In this lecture we are going to review some considerations that should be taken into account when determining between Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps.

Organization Design

05:41

In Lecture 41, we will discuss Requirements Complexity and where each tool is better suited based upon the requirements of the solution.

Requirements Complexity

13:43

In this lecture we are going to talk more about scaling your organization through the use of Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps.

In this demo, we will create a contractor onboarding process that leverages Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Flow, Approvals and SharePoint online to automate a business process.

Contractor Onboarding

12:04

Automated document generation represents a great opportunity for organizations to reduce manual labor. In this demo, we are going to use a SharePoint flow button to retrieve SharePoint list data and merge it with a Microsoft Word template that we can convert to PDF and send to a staffing agency.

In this demo we are going to implement an Employee on-boarding solution that requires the use of the Flat File Decoder found in Enterprise Integration Pack. We are also going to take advantage of the new Inline Code feature to further transform the format of the message.

Employee Onboarding

10:31

Reactive programming is an event-based model for subscribing to events, at scale, and then reacting to them. In this demo, we look at how Azure Logic Apps can subscribe to Azure Subscription events in order to impose cloud governance.

Cloud Governance - Azure Deployments

16:46

In this lecture we summarize what are some of the common, or unique, characteristics of Azure Logic Apps that makes it the right tool for the scenarios that we just demo'd.

In this lecture, we are going to talk about a new capability that was recently released by the Microsoft Flow team and that is the new Copy to my clipboard feature that allows us to copy and paste actions/scopes in order to improve productivity.

In this bonus-content TUTORIAL, I am going to walk you through how you can build chat bot experiences using Power Virtual Agents and Power Automate. We will approach this step-by-step to ensure you have a working chat bot that leverages Power Automate.

Lecture 52: Building Chat Bots using Power Virtual Agents and Power Automate

32:30

In this bonus-content TUTORIAL, I am going to walk you through building your first UI Flows. This tutorial will include both desktop automation and web-based automation.